The ferocious gales impacted worst on Didcot. A roof was blown off a caravan in Foxhall Manor Park and a six-foot high wall collapsed across a public footpath between Sandringham Road and Balmoral Road.

Mr Carritt added: “This was in the days before mobile phones so we had to use short wave radio systems in communication with emergency services. “We lost communications because of a power failure at the transmitter. They were left to their own devices but they coped extremely well.”